


Turned Away On Your Side

by Roscavenbar



Category: Pundit RPF, Pundit RPF (US), Real News RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roscavenbar/pseuds/Roscavenbar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Something with Jon being very protective of Anderson. Could be platonic or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turned Away On Your Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unquietspirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unquietspirit/gifts).



Anderson still wasn't quite sure how things had come to where they were. Or why. 

But Anderson was a journalist. There are questions you have to ask. 

Who?

Anderson Cooper. Leading light of CNN. Emmy winner. Peabody winner. 

When?

11.30 PM EST, Friday night. The end of a gruesome work week. 

Where?

One of New York's more obscure bars. A place of bad music but good cocktails, and that suited Anderson's drinking companions just fine. 

What?

Dashing for the door like a Norovirus victim for a bathroom, phone in hand, counting the vibrations. 

Why?

Yeah...have to get back to you on that one. 

Anderson made it onto the balcony before answering the phone.

"H'lo?"

Keith's voice was thick, insistent. Anderson's heart began to hammer. 

"Hey. What's up?"

"Found myself missing you, Anderson. Here I am in this hotel room in Denver without you, all alone and naked."

"Naked?"

"Yeah. And missing you. You know what that means, don't you?"

"Uh...yeah." Anderson felt himself growing hard. 

"God, I want you."

"I want you too. So much." Anderson looked to make sure he was alone and gently squeezed himself through his pants. 

"Where are you? At home?"

The door opened, letting out a wave of noise and also Stephen Colbert, who looked vaguely around, smiled and then disappeared back inside. 

"Delwyn's. Nice party but I'd rather be with you." Anderson continued to stroke himself. 

"Delwyn's? Who's there with you?" 

"Rachel, obviously. She says hi. Ana Marie, too. And Amy."

"Did Amy bring Stephen?"

"Yeah. He's soooo drunk, you would not believe—"

"Is Jon there?" Keith's voice quenched Anderson's lustful tipsy glow like a bucket of ice water. 

"Yeah."

_"Is he trying to fuck you?"_

"What?"

"Is Jon Stewart trying to fuck you?"

"No, no! I've barely spoken to him apart from hello. He's spent the whole evening watching Rachel do knife tricks and trying to get her to sing Thunder Road with him."

"So you've been hanging onto every word he says?" The bitter voice was insistent. 

"No! I've been talking to Amy mostly. She says hi, hopes you're doing OK."

"Stop trying to change the subject. What about Jon?"

"There's nothing to say about Jon! He's just here with Rachel! That's all!"

"Really, Anderson?"

"Why can't you trust me?" Christ, his voice was shaking. He'd reported under fire in war zones more times than he cared to remember, and his voice was shaking just talking to his boyfriend. 

"I do trust you. I don't trust... _him_." Keith spat out the pronoun. "He looks at you. He wants you."

"Fuck. No. Please believe me."

"I wish I could, Anderson. I just wish I could."

"Keith, I'm leaving now. Right now. Give me five minutes to pay and I'm finding a cab and going home, and I'm going to take a long bath and talk dirty the way you like it, just _please_ don't do this."

Stephen reappeared on the balcony, mouthing _OK_? Anderson fumbled a few bills in his direction and slipped away, phone still at his ear.

"What just happened with Anderson?" Stephen asked. "Something came up at work?"

Amy grinned. "Something came up in Keith's pants, more like."

Rachel pulled out her phone, frowned at the screen, photographed her friends around the table and sent a succession of very rapid texts. Jon looked at her quizzically. 

"Later," she said. 

A few streets away, Anderson scanned the oncoming traffic for a cab, still on the phone, cajoling, explaining, calming. Maybe this time it would be all right. 

* * *

A few weeks later. Anderson curled around Keith in the big bed, head on Keith's chest. Keith's fingers moving in Anderson's hair. His other hand on Anderson's shoulder.

"Can't believe they're sending you there again," Keith muttered.

"I know. But the war isn't over yet."

"I get scared for you."

"What I do is nothing and you know it. The soldiers stay for a year at a time."

"I'll miss you."

"And me you."

"Do you know anyone else who's going to be in Afghanistan then?"

"Nope."

Keith's hand tightened almost imperceptibly on Anderson's shoulder. "What about Jon?"

"Jon?"

"Jon _Stewart_. Who else?"

"Keith, he's a _comedian_! Nobody sends a comedian to Afghanistan!"

"He's going to be there. He's going there to entertain the troops, and you knew, and you made sure not to tell me."

"Keith, where are you getting this from? I had no idea!"

Keith held his phone in front of Anderson's nose. "See? Right here. Entertainment Weekly."

"I don't read that crap. In case you hadn't noticed, I've been busy."

"Oh, that's what it's all about, is it?"

"What?" 

Keith pushed Anderson off his chest and sat up, grabbing for his clothes. "Forget it, Anderson. I'll see you around."

"Keith, come back! I don't even know—"

The door slammed. 

* * *

Another bar. Louder, worse drinks, more expensive lighting, more fashionable music. Anderson laughed, told jokes, said that at least in Afghanistan he'd have a month to lose the alcohol weight. He let the smile drop for just a moment, when Rachel had gone to the bathroom and Stephen was proving he could kiss Paul and Amy simultaneously, so Anderson thought nobody was watching.

He was wrong. A tap on the shoulder. Jon. 

"Oh...hi."

Jon hooked a thumb at a door behind him. "Come on."

"Jon, if you were trying to get outside, you got the wrong door. This is a utility closet."

"Exactly. We can talk without having to say hi to everyone coming outside for a smoke."

"You need to talk to me, Jon?"

" _You_ need to talk. He left, didn't he? He left and you can't stop wanting him."

Anderson sagged forward as if gut-punched. His pale face reddened. 

"It's something we have in common," Jon said. "You want the big guy, the blowhard, the one who grabs your wrists and crushes you up against the wall. You want the guy who bites your neck so that every time you want to loosen your collar in the bar after work and can't, you think of him and he knows that. And you know he knows."

Anderson shrugged. "It's not that simple. Keith's complicated. He is what he is."

"What he is, is a pundit. People listen to him when he rants and shouts. I'm a comedian. People listen when I make with the funny. So shut up for a moment and remember that people used to pay good money for this."

Jon reached up to cup Anderson's cheek and placed a thumb over his lips. 

"Remember my Glenn Beck schtick? I'll let you in on something not many people know. I got that from Rachel—when she's drunk she pulls up a chalkboard app on her phone"—Jon poked at an icon on his phone—"pushes her glasses up like this"—Jon adjusted an imaginary pair of glasses—"instant Beck." The simulated chalkboard squeaked as Beck-Jon quickly sketched three interlocking circles. "Now I don't know much, maybe I'm crazy or maybe I'm just the last sane man trying to do his best for the America I love in a world gone crazy, but I do know this. This circle is what you want" —Beck-Jon wrote WANT in the circle—"this one is what you need"—he wrote NEED—"and this final one is what you get"—he wrote GET. "And the secret, the secret that I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say out loud, for fear of what will happen to me, is that happiness is found in that space in the middle. Contentment—again, I don't know what consequences I may face for telling you the truth—is the process of moving those circles over each other so they coincide as much as they can." He dabbed imaginary tears off his cheek, put the phone away, removed his invisible glasses, shook his head and became Jon again. "Your problem is that none of it lines up. He isn't what you need. After that, I don't think he's what you can get."

"Congratulations on getting Glenn Beck and the Rolling Stones into the same cliched he's-not-the-guy-for-you relationship talk. That takes talent."

"I'm like you in that way, Anderson. There's only one thing I can do, and when I'm on a roll I'm the best in the whole damn world. Fucking useless at everything else."

Jon shrugged and held his hands out at his sides. Anderson pulled Jon towards him, embracing the narrow shoulders and burying his face in Jon's curly grey hair.

"That was a look-at-this-pathetic-loser gesture rather than a come-here-for-a-hug gesture," said Jon's rather muffled voice, "but I can go either way."

Anderson shivered and held tighter to Jon.

"Love me, Jon. Love me tonight for I may never see you again."

"You can't get into my pants by quoting the Boss at me," murmured Jon, but he was murmuring the words around Anderson's tongue and he felt Anderson rising, pushing against his hip. 

"I've already done the time. Might as well do the crime."

"You shouldn't do this. We shouldn't do this—" The rest of Jon's sentence was lost as Anderson pushed him up against the wall, kissing his nose, his eyelids, his hairline, fingers ploughing into his hair, slipping between buttons under waistband over skin, all the time grinding against Jon's hip. Jon stood stonelike, almost part of the wall, eyes closed, held Anderson as he ground out loss and shame and hurt, neither assisting nor deterring, just present, there. There for Anderson. There as Anderson came with a full-body shudder, hot breath in Jon's ear forming words. _"Oh no, not again."_ Anderson's neck smooth and warm against Jon's lips. The heat and the light, the grease and the salt. 

"What's this?" 

Jon opened his eyes to see that Anderson was holding a cheap blue Bic lighter. "Thought you quit smoking."

"I did," Jon said. "I carry that around because you never know when you might need to set something on fire."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Also to remind me that any time I want something so bad that every cell in my body screams out for it, means that thing is really fucking _bad_ for me."

"Cute, Jon," Anderson said. "Real cute."

"Oh, look at the guy who just seduced me in a supply closet talking about cute." Jon rolled his eyes.

"Why did you even let me do that?" Anderson asked. 

"You're going to Afghanistan with a broken heart. Least I could do. Now go clean yourself up and I'll get you another one of those overpriced yuzu and sorrel things."

He spoke quickly so that Anderson would not hear the catch in his voice.

* * *  
A midtown Starbucks. No different from any other Starbucks coast to coast. Except for the calorie count on the menu, because the great state of New York _cares_ about your health. 

"I don't suppose you brought me here for the fine French roast," Keith growled. 

"Correct," Jon said. "I brought you here because you're hurting someone I love and nobody does that."

"Anderson?"

"Nothing gets past you, does it, Keith? Can't think how that Pulitzer's evaded you. Yeah, Anderson. The beautiful brilliant Anderson who follows you around like a fucking puppy while you break his heart."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Jon."

"I do know. I know you think I'm always plotting and scheming to fuck him, and every time you call him you make him account for every guy in the room and start yelling if I'm one of them, and you get Rachel to corroborate. I know you've checked his phone when he's asleep. I know you let him go off to Afghanistan thinking you were still angry at him because he told me when I was there last week. And I know the worst thing, which is that assuming he comes back alive, you're about to ruin the best thing you'll ever have because every time you do what you do, a little bit of his heart gets chipped away." Jon's fists were balled up and his teeth clenched. He expected Keith to snap back at him, to yell, possibly to shove him away, except that respectable middle-aged journalists don't go around starting brawls in chain coffee shops. 

Instead the big man seemed to collapse in on himself. 

"I know. Look at him. Just _look_ at him. He's amazing. I don't deserve...nobody does. Maybe you. You're like him. The best. I'm just a schmuck with a temper and I know I'm going to lose him out of being so fucking stupid."

"In that case," Jon said, very slowly, through gritted teeth, "have you ever considered NOT being so fucking stupid? Because I should point out that both options are on the table."

"Why are you even doing this?" Keith asked. "Why aren't you just telling me you'll go New Jersey on my ass if you ever catch me talking to him again?"

"Because I'm an idiot too, Keith. An idiot who knows that not everyone gets their perfect lover on a fucking plate. And sometimes love's ugly and fucked up and a lot of the time it hurts, and it might not be enough, but that doesn't mean it's not real."

"Anderson was right, you know," Keith mused. "You do listen to far too much Bruce Springsteen."

* * *

A bad Irish bar this time. Indifferent Guinness, a startling assortment of fried things on the menu and a genuine Irish barman who would genuinely disappear into the back for hours at a time if anyone with a vague Homeland Security look to them came through the door. Jon would have stayed longer, but his old friend insomnia was finally calling in the markers for this month and payment would not be deferred. 

Standing in the doorway, Jon saw Stephen pointing at his Guinness and saying "Because I'm Irish, that's why! Our pride was all we ever had!" and Rachel howling with laughter at something on Ana Marie's iPad. Paul and Amy high-fived behind Stephen's back, and as Jon watched, he saw Keith and Anderson's hands tentatively meet under the table, like growing tendrils, like antennae. The ball of Keith's thumb stroked Anderson's wrist, and Anderson's fingers interlaced into Keith's, and Jon Stewart smiled to himself, turned and walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> Explanation of the title: I found out that Anderson likes this [bossa nova cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart](http://youtu.be/8oWO7Om17v0). That's always been one of my favourite songs and I used it to describe Anderson and Keith's relationship. [This](http://youtu.be/KZ314hldal4) is the song Anderson tried to get into Jon's pants with.   
>  
> 
> [Anderson's playlist!](http://stereogum.com/2626/anderson_cooper_americas_indie_rock_cable_news_anc/news/)


End file.
